http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |
If you've got it, flaunt it. If you've got too
much of it, not to worry.

The girdle's coming back.

Wait! Wait! Come down from that ledge! You
don't have to wear one unless you want to! And they're far softer
and sexier than the rubber tummy terminators of yore. And
besides, the whole point about girdles and their kissing cousins
corsets is that they're not considered confining anymore. They're
empowering.

As empowering as stiletto sandals.

Okay, so even if it's hard to totally trust the girdle's feminist
credentials (wouldn't real power constitute the right to jiggle with
pride?) there must be something to the current girdle craze
because even skinny Minnies like Gwyneth Paltrow, Nicole
Kidman and the pre-pregnant Sarah Jessica Parker have been
embracing these embracers.

These ladies need slimming like Barbie needs Botox. So why?
Well, as Parker once said, "It gives you a certain feeling of stature
when you wear those things."

Of course, stature is what corseting has always been about, says
Colette Wong, an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of
Technology who teaches a new corset-making class there.

"Corsetry goes back to Greek times, and it's all about status,"
Wong explains. "The higher you were in society, the more you
were structured."

A woman corseted to the point of near immobility was clearly a
woman of leisure. She couldn't work even if she wanted to.

As simple a thing as sitting down was tough for women wearing a
proper corset, says Wong. Because it was impossible for them to
bend or slouch, "They literally had to lower themselves into a
chair."

For about 400 years, women used corsets to reshape their bodies
every way imaginable. For instance, in the 1800s, the ideal female
torso was flat as a man's. Other eras had women bursting out on
top.

But by the turn of the century - the 19th into the 20th, that is -
corsets started to lose favor, says Valerie Steele, acting director of
the museum at FIT: "People had already decided you needed to
internalize the function of the corset through diet and exercise."

In other words: Rather than having stays and laces shaping their
bodies, independent young women wanted to shape themselves.

Our long national march to the gym had begun. Steele recalls
reading one 1903 interview with sexy actresses of the day
bragging that they didn't need corsets. They were in perfect shape
already!

That's why girdles, which came along after corsets had already
begun to fade, never really acquired the same sexy status as their
laceup forbears.

"Whereas prior to [the 20th century] everybody wore corsets,"
says Steele, "by the time girdles came into fashion, it already
seemed that if you were stuck wearing one, you were sort of a
failure."

Corsets had reshaped the body to be fashionable.

Girdles were simply for solidifying flab.

But now that both garments are coming back - sometimes as
underwear, sometimes as outerwear - the girdle is gaining new
allure. Maybe that's because high-profile waifs are wearing them.

Or maybe it's because guys know that any gal in a girdle is usually
anxious to take it off.

Like this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.